Prometheus 6

Democratic politicians in Florida and Michigan flouted party rules consciously and willfully. And the hilarious thing is, had they not they done so they would have been in precisely the definitive position they were seeking. 

So the rules only hold when you like the result?  Changing the rules now would be exactly like bailing out the mortgage banking industry.

Democrats in Stalemate
Voters in Florida and Michigan should not be excluded from the presidential primary.
Friday, March 21, 2008; A16 

THE COLLAPSE of efforts to conduct new primaries in Michigan and Florida leaves the Democratic Party in a pickle partly of its own making. That's not our concern. Our worry is about voters in Florida and Michigan. They shouldn't be punished because lawmakers and state party officials scheduled unauthorized early primaries or because national Democrats failed to anticipate the high cost of making good on their threat to ignore results from states that jumped the starting gun. The best solution -- one that seems all but impossible at the moment -- would be to hold new votes in both states, perhaps reducing their delegate allocation as a price for having tried to game the system. While it's unlikely that these do-overs would be enough to tip the nomination to either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the more voters who participated, the more legitimacy would be accorded the ultimate outcome. Without a new vote, however, it's incumbent on the party and the candidates to come up with a fair way to dig themselves out of this mess.